I know I have a number of readers who are current or former law enforcement personnel. Many of them carry Winchester duty or defensive ammunition. For their benefit, I pass on this warning about an FBI recall of some Winchester .40 S&W duty ammunition.

The FBI is working with Winchester on a potentially serious condition affecting all recently produced .40 S&W, Winchester, Q4355, 180grain, Bonded SERVICE ammunition. Some of the cartridge casings were produced without a flash hole. This condition completely eliminates the ability of this Service cartridge to fire.

This is a silent killer in that no visual inspection by FBI personnel can detect this manufacturing defect and it would only be known at the time the Agent attempted to fire their handgun. A limited number of problems have been reported: however, this is such a dangerous condition [that] immediate action across the FBI is necessary.

Affected ammunition will have a four character ‘day code’, two letters, two numbers, i.e., FA 42. All Q4355 with day codes beginning with the letter F and any Q4355 with the two letter combination of EN are included in this recall. This ammunition must be removed from FBI service weapons and magazines IMMEDIATELY.

Again, boxed ammunition with the following codes must be removed from service IMMEDIATELY:

Product Code: Q4355

Day Code: Any code beginning with F or EN

You’ll find the announcement here, along with comments from other users.